Amrut Dredging Reported ₹5 Crore of FY24 Profit. Its Operating Cash Flow Was ₹5.67 Lakh.

Amrut Dredging and Shipping reported a profit of ₹5.00 crore for FY2024. In the same year, its operating activities generated ₹5.67 lakh of cash.

That is not a typo, and it is not a rounding artefact. The number sits in the company's own restated cash flow statement, filed with its draft prospectus in November 2024. For every rupee of reported profit, the business produced a little over one paisa of operating cash.

Unlisted dealers are currently quoting the shares between ₹199 and ₹232. At the top of that range the company is valued at roughly ₹331 crore. The question worth sitting with is not whether dredging is a good business in India. It is whether anyone pricing these shares has read past the profit line.

What the company actually does, and for how long

Dredging is the business of digging out the seabed: deepening a shipping channel so larger vessels can berth, or clearing the silt that washes back into it every year. Amrut owns or leases 28 vessels and hires them out: dredgers, hopper barges, jack-ups and tugs. It does capital and maintenance dredging, beach nourishment, land reclamation and coastal protection work, mostly for ports and for large infrastructure contractors. The draft prospectus names Larsen & Toubro, HOWE Engineering and Coastal Marine Construction and Engineering among its customers. The company's website also displays the marks of Cochin Port Authority, Gujarat Maritime Board, JNPT, ONGC and AFCONS, without stating in what capacity.

The board is five people: Pavan Gandhi as managing director, Drushti Gandhi, Capt. Banshi D. Mishra, CS Manoj Lotia and Girdhari Lal Kundalwal. Pavan Gandhi is the named promoter and held 64.32% of the pre-issue capital himself, with the promoter group together at 72.88%.

The corporate history needs getting straight, because three versions are in circulation. The homepage claims "13 Years Of Excellence" in one place and "Established 10 years ago" in another; IPO aggregators say 2014. The prospectus is clearer. Amrut was incorporated on 27 March 1995 as Amrut Securities Limited and operated as a sub-broker on the BSE. The name changed in August 2014, the objects clause was altered to permit dredging and chartering in 2018, and the prospectus states the company "has been in the business of dredging and charter hiring ships, boats, tugs, vessels, trawlers, and dredgers since then."

The accounts suggest the business is younger still. Here is where revenue actually came from:

₹ crore	FY22	FY23	FY24	Q1 FY25
Sales (trading)	20.25	23.08	10.23	2.91
Vessel services income	0.13	0.36	28.54	15.18
Revenue from operations	20.38	23.44	38.77	18.10

Until FY2023 this was a trading company with a nominal marine line: vessel services income of ₹13 lakh in FY2022 and ₹36 lakh in FY2023. In FY2024 it became ₹28.54 crore, which the prospectus attributes to fleet expansion and new tenders. As a revenue-generating operation at any scale, the dredging business is about two years old. That is not a criticism. Companies pivot, and this one pivoted into a sector with genuine policy support. It does mean the track record a buyer is underwriting is shorter than the branding suggests.

The number that matters: cash

Reported profit and cash generated are different things, and the gap between them is where most of the useful information in a small-company prospectus hides.

₹ crore	FY22	FY23	FY24	Q1 FY25
Profit after tax	1.97	0.36	5.00	10.51
Net cash from operations	7.26	(5.34)	0.06	13.50
Trade receivables	15.89	24.78	29.52	34.13
Receivable days	285	386	278	172*

*Q1 FY25 days calculated on annualised quarterly revenue. FY24 operating cash of ₹0.06 crore is ₹5.67 lakh. Source: restated financial statements in the DRHP dated 21 November 2024, audited by Bilimoria Mehta & Co.

Receivable days is simply how long, on average, the company waits to be paid after it bills. Thirty to sixty days is normal in most businesses. Amrut's have run between nine months and over a year of revenue for three straight years. In FY2024 the company billed ₹38.77 crore and ended the year owed ₹29.52 crore. The profit was real in an accounting sense. It had simply not arrived in the bank.

To put ₹5.67 lakh in proportion: the company's entire employee bill for FY2024 was ₹1.64 crore. A full year of operations threw off less cash than it spent on salaries in a fortnight.

This is not unheard of in marine contracting, where port authorities and large EPC contractors pay slowly and retention money sits for long periods. But it sets the terms of the investment case. A business that converts profit into cash this slowly needs continuous external funding to grow, which is precisely what the prospectus proposes: ₹19 crore of the issue is earmarked for working capital.

The prospectus does not hide this. One of its own risk factors warns that "failure by customers to make payment could affect their cash flows and working capital". The document is candid; the number is simply easy to miss if you stop at the profit line.

The June 2024 quarter is the counter-example, and a good one. Operating cash of ₹13.50 crore exceeded profit of ₹10.51 crore. Money genuinely came in. One quarter is one quarter, but it suggests the collection problem is a timing issue rather than a permanent feature.

Where the ₹110 crore of net worth came from

The balance sheet is the most commonly misread part of this company. Net worth of ₹110.03 crore at March 2024 looks substantial for a business with ₹38.77 crore of revenue. Here is what sits inside it:

₹ crore, at 31 March 2024	Amount
Share capital	12.52
Securities premium	98.57
Retained earnings	(1.04)
Other comprehensive income	(0.01)
Net worth	110.03

Figures rounded to two decimals from the restated accounts, which are stated in lakhs.

Roughly 90% of the equity is money investors put in. Cumulative retained earnings were negative ₹1.04 crore at the end of FY2024, and were negative at the start and end of every year the prospectus reports. The company has not revalued its assets at any point, which the prospectus states explicitly, so none of this is a paper exercise.

During FY2024 Amrut raised ₹67.09 crore by issuing shares, through a series of preferential allotments at ₹125 per share between December 2023 and March 2024. It spent ₹56.45 crore on vessels in the same year. That is a reasonable use of the money, and it is why total assets went from ₹72.90 crore to ₹147.17 crore. Borrowings stayed low at ₹14.18 crore, giving a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.13.

One more allotment followed on 3 August 2024: 2,00,000 shares at ₹130. That is the last price at which the company itself sold equity, and it is the single most useful anchor available.

The question the FY2025 tax return raises

Here is where it gets genuinely interesting, and where this article cannot give a complete answer.

The prospectus is two years old. Its most recent column covers the three months to 30 June 2024, and it is a spectacular column: total income ₹21.14 crore, profit after tax ₹10.51 crore. The prospectus states the figure plainly, that profit after tax "was 49.70% of the total income." That single quarter earned more than double the whole of FY2024 and flipped cumulative retained earnings positive for the first time.

No audited accounts for FY2025 have been published. What the company has published, in the investor section of its own website, is its income tax return acknowledgement for assessment year 2025-26, covering the year ended 31 March 2025. It was filed on 9 December 2025 and signed by the managing director. Two lines on it matter:

• Book profit under MAT: ₹2,26,76,682 (₹2.27 crore)
• Total income under normal provisions: ₹68,84,290 (₹68.84 lakh)

The tax figures corroborate each other. Net tax payable of ₹37,85,191 is exactly 15% of that book profit, plus 7% surcharge and 4% cess, to the rupee. The company paid tax under the Minimum Alternate Tax regime, on a book profit of ₹2.27 crore, for the full financial year.

The first quarter of that same year was reported in the prospectus at ₹12.87 crore of profit before tax.

Book profit under section 115JB is not identical to accounting profit before tax, so the two numbers are not required to match. The main permitted deduction that could narrow the gap is brought-forward book loss or unabsorbed depreciation, whichever is lower. Amrut's accumulated book loss at March 2024 was ₹1.04 crore, which caps that adjustment at roughly ₹1 crore. The prospectus figures are restated and consolidated while the return is standalone, but the minority interest in those accounts is ₹1.6 lakh, so consolidation explains nothing material either.

Work it through and FY2025 full-year accounting profit appears to have been somewhere around ₹3 crore, against ₹12.87 crore in the first quarter alone. The arithmetic points to a weak nine months, a restatement difference, or something in that June quarter that did not repeat.

On that last possibility, the quarter contained ₹3.05 crore of other income against ₹1.02 crore for the whole of the preceding year. The largest component, ₹2.85 crore, is booked as "Miscellaneous Income" and is not broken down anywhere in the prospectus. It is 22% of that quarter's pre-tax profit.

None of this is evidence of anything improper. It is evidence that the single quarter carrying this company's entire equity story has not been explained, and the only full-year document covering it points somewhere else. That is the question to put to the company, and it is answerable in one sentence by anyone holding the FY2025 audited accounts.

What ₹232 assumes

Dealer quotes in the second week of November 2026 ranged from ₹199.40 to ₹232 per share on about 1.43 crore shares outstanding. These are indicative quotes, not traded prices, and they vary by desk. One platform showed the ₹232 quote unchanged across its entire 52-week range and flat over six months, which says more about how rarely the stock changes hands than about where value sits.

At ₹232 per share	Amrut	Knowledge Marine (listed)
Market capitalisation	₹331 crore	₹7,456 crore
Latest full-year net profit	₹5.00 crore (FY24)	₹79.11 crore (FY26)
Latest full-year revenue	₹38.77 crore (FY24)	₹256.28 crore (FY26)
Price to earnings	66x on FY24	about 60x trailing
Price to book	2.7x	10.4x
Return on net worth	6.68%	19.75%*
Listed and liquid	No	Yes

*Both return-on-net-worth figures are as stated in Amrut's own prospectus peer table. Knowledge Marine market capitalisation as at 5 October 2026; price-to-earnings and price-to-book from exchange data for 11 November 2026, after its 1:5 stock split on 6 November 2026. Its trailing earnings run ahead of FY26 on the strength of recent quarters.

The comparison is uncomfortable in one direction and reassuring in another. Amrut is being quoted at a similar earnings multiple to a listed peer that earns about sixteen times the profit, grew that profit 59.5% in FY2026, discloses every quarter, and can be sold on a Tuesday. On price to book Amrut is far cheaper, because so much of its book is recently raised cash and newly bought steel rather than accumulated earnings.

Measured against the FY2025 tax return's book profit of ₹2.27 crore, ₹232 works out at about 146 times. That multiple should be read with the caveat set out above, since book profit under MAT is not the same thing as accounting profit, but it is the only full-year figure on record for FY2025.

At the bottom of the quoted range, ₹199.40, the implied market capitalisation is about ₹285 crore and the FY2024 earnings multiple falls to roughly 57 times. The spread between desks is itself worth noticing: 16% separates the highest quote from the lowest.

There is also a cleaner anchor available. The proposed issue is 49,10,000 fresh shares, and the prospectus identifies ₹54.95 crore of specific uses: ₹35.95 crore for dredgers, barges and tugs, and ₹19 crore for working capital. Dividing those uses by the share count gives ₹112 per share as the arithmetic floor for what the issue must raise. Add issue expenses and general corporate purposes at its 25% cap and the implied range stretches to somewhere near ₹165. Both ends sit below today's quotes. The issue size and objects could be revised in a final prospectus, and after two years they may well be.

The mechanics, if you are looking at these shares

Valuation is only half of what decides the outcome here. The other half is how the instrument behaves, and on that the pre-IPO market works very differently from a stock you can sell on your phone.

The quote you get depends on who you call. Three desks were showing ₹232, ₹200 and ₹199.40 in the same week. Minimum lots differ too: one desk quotes 100 shares, another 500, another 1,000. At ₹232 that is a minimum ticket of anywhere between ₹23,200 and ₹2.32 lakh for the identical asset. There is no exchange and no consolidated tape, so the only price that exists for you is the one a desk confirms on the day.

A flat quote is not a stable price. One platform has shown ₹232 as its price, its 52-week high and its 52-week low, with no change over six months. That is not a market reaching consensus. It is a posted level on an asset that rarely changes hands, and it means the exit price is unknown until you try to find a buyer.

Listing does not mean immediate liquidity. This is the mechanic most often missed. Under SEBI's ICDR regulations, pre-issue shares held by anyone other than promoters are locked in after an SME listing, and the SME lock-in has been one year from allotment rather than the six months that applies to mainboard issues. SEBI's October 2026 consultation paper proposes cutting the SME period to six months, but that was still a proposal when this was written. So shares bought today would be locked for a period starting from an IPO that has no date. Anyone considering this should confirm the current position, because it decides when the money comes back.

If the IPO never revives, the exit is the same dealer market. The DRHP was filed two years ago and nothing has followed it. A company is under no obligation to proceed, and some withdraw. In that case there is no listing, no lock-in to wait out, and no bid except whatever a desk is willing to post.

Whenever the issue does revive, it arrives with numbers nobody has seen. The restated accounts in the DRHP stop at 30 June 2024. Any revived offer document will carry updated restated financials, which means FY2025 and FY2026 become public at that moment. Given what the FY2025 tax return suggests, that is the single event most likely to reprice these shares in either direction.

Tax runs on a longer clock than listed shares. Unlisted shares must be held for more than 24 months to qualify for long-term treatment, against 12 months for listed equity. Long-term gains on unlisted shares are taxed at a flat 12.5% without indexation for transfers on or after 23 July 2024. The ₹1.25 lakh annual shield that listed equity gets under section 112A does not apply here. Below 24 months, gains are added to income and taxed at your slab rate. Confirm your own position with a tax adviser, since treatment can change once the shares list.

Check any number you have seen about this company

Amrut is a useful case study in how unlisted-share data goes wrong, because the errors are checkable against the prospectus in a few minutes. The most consequential one starts inside the prospectus itself.

The peer comparison compares a quarter against three years

Every aggregator covering this company republishes the same peer table, and it is the source of the figure most often quoted about Amrut: earnings per share of ₹8.39. The prospectus picks two listed marine-services companies as comparables, ABS Marine Services and Knowledge Marine & Engineering Works, and prints the table like this.

Year ended 31 March 2024	Amrut	ABS Marine	Knowledge Marine
Total income (₹ crore)	21.14	138.02	166.71
Basic and diluted EPS (₹)	8.39	13.09	30.63
Return on net worth	6.68%	21.69%	19.75%
NAV per share (₹)	87.90	65.10	163.24

Note (ii) beneath that table states that "the figures of Amrut Dredging and Shipping Limited are based on the Restated Financial Information for the year ended March 31, 2024." Note (iii) says the peer figures are for the same year.

Two of Amrut's four figures are not from that year. Total income of ₹21.14 crore and earnings per share of ₹8.39 are the three months to 30 June 2024. Both appear in the restated profit and loss account under the June 2024 column. Amrut's actual figures for the year ended 31 March 2024 were total income of ₹39.79 crore and earnings per share of ₹3.99. The return on net worth and the net asset value in the table are correctly from FY2024.

So the comparison a reader makes is Amrut's quarter against its peers' years. It flatters the earnings line by more than double and understates the revenue line by nearly half. On a like-for-like basis Amrut earned ₹3.99 per share against ABS Marine's ₹13.09 and Knowledge Marine's ₹30.63.

This reads as a drafting error rather than anything else, and the correct numbers are elsewhere in the same document. But it has been copied outward for two years, and it is why Amrut appears more profitable per share than its own accounts support.

Then the share count compounds it

Every derived ratio depends on the share count, and it has moved four times:

Date	Shares outstanding	Source
31 March 2022 and 2023	71,51,300	DRHP, note 10
31 March 2024 and 30 June 2024	1,25,18,600	DRHP, note 10
21 November 2024 (DRHP date)	1,37,21,600	DRHP capital structure
November 2026	1,42,74,725	Dealer platforms

Watch what happens when a platform pairs the right numerator with the wrong denominator. One widely used page reports earnings per share of ₹3.51 and book value of ₹77.08, both labelled "as of March 31, 2024". Both are FY2024 figures divided by today's share count. The prospectus gives the real ones: ₹3.99 and ₹87.90, calculated on the 1,25,18,600 shares that actually existed then. The understated book value pushes that page's price-to-book to 2.59 where the March 2024 figures give 2.28.

Two more, both checkable in a minute. One platform answers "DRHP Filed? No", when it was filed on 21 November 2024 and sits on the company's own website. Several report FY2025 revenue of about ₹72.36 crore, which is the June 2024 quarter multiplied by four.

None of this is unique to Amrut. We have written before about a company whose share count was reported ten times too high, with a market capitalisation to match. The habit worth building is simple: before accepting a price-to-book or an earnings multiple on any unlisted company, find the share count and the date it belongs to.

The bull case

• The demand is real. Indian major ports handled a record 915 million tonnes of cargo in FY2025-26. The Sagarmala programme covers 845 projects worth ₹6.06 lakh crore, of which 315 worth ₹1.57 lakh crore are complete, and Sagarmala 2.0 carries ₹85,482 crore of government support. Deeper channels and new berths require capital dredging, and siltation guarantees maintenance work regardless of the cycle.
• The fleet is owned, and recently bought. ₹56.45 crore of vessel purchases in FY2024 gave the company ₹62.73 crore of property, plant and equipment by June 2024. Charter rates accrue to the owner.
• The balance sheet is not stretched. Borrowings of ₹14.18 crore against ₹110 crore of net worth is conservative for an asset-heavy contractor.
• Promoters are not selling. The issue is entirely fresh capital, with no offer for sale. Promoter and promoter group holding was 72.88% before the issue.
• The June 2024 quarter converted to cash. Whatever drove the profit, ₹13.50 crore of operating cash arrived with it. If that is the business running normally rather than a one-off, the cash concern largely answers itself.

The risks

• Customer concentration, and rising. The top five customers accounted for 66.60% of revenue in FY2022, 74.15% in FY2023 and 79.90% in FY2024.
• One revenue line. Charter hire was 73.21% of FY2024 revenue. Charter rates are set by supply and demand and the prospectus flags their volatility as a material risk.
• A thin order book. ₹32.01 crore as at 31 August 2024, against FY2024 revenue of ₹38.77 crore. That is under a year of work, and it has not been updated publicly since.
• Utilisation decides the quarter. The prospectus describes the same 28 vessels two ways: the strengths section says "all their owned vessels are contracted to reputed Indian companies", while the risk factors warn that "there could be situations when all or none or some of the vessels be productively engaged". Both are fair descriptions at different points in a cycle. For a business whose costs are fixed in steel, which one holds decides the result.
• Nine permanent employees. Three in management, six in administration, with crew contracted through a manning agent. For 28 vessels and ₹161 crore of assets, that is a very light permanent organisation.
• Related-party overlap. A promoter group company, Amrut Orinoco Ship Management, operates in a similar line of business with no non-compete agreement in place.
• Tax matters outstanding. Contingent liabilities were ₹3.90 crore at June 2024, almost entirely direct tax, against nil in FY2022 and FY2023.
• Disclosure quality. Parts of the company's website still carry unedited template text, including a placeholder email address and a fictitious overseas postal address. A buyer at ₹232 is relying on this paperwork.
• The IPO has not moved. Filed 21 November 2024. Two years on there is no price band, no dates, no final prospectus, and nothing newer on the investor page.

What would change the picture

Three things, in order of how much they would move the analysis. FY2025 and FY2026 audited accounts, which would resolve the tax-return gap immediately and whose continued absence is itself the most informative fact available. A breakdown of the ₹2.85 crore of miscellaneous income in the June 2024 quarter. And a final prospectus with a price band, which would replace a two-year-old document with a live number and tell the unlisted market what the company and its bankers actually think the equity is worth.

Bottom line

India will dredge a great deal over the next decade, and a company that owns 28 vessels and has already won work from L&T and the port authorities is positioned to take some of it. The pivot from broking to marine services has produced real revenue, real assets and, in at least one quarter, real cash.

What has not yet been produced is a demonstrated ability to turn that revenue into cash consistently. FY2024 converted ₹5.00 crore of profit into ₹5.67 lakh of operating cash, FY2023 converted a small profit into a ₹5.34 crore outflow, and the one quarter that broke the pattern is also the quarter the FY2025 tax return appears to argue with.

At ₹232 the market is paying 66 times a profit that did not become cash, and a 78% premium to the ₹130 the company itself charged for shares in August 2024. The clearest anchor is the prospectus's own arithmetic: the ₹54.95 crore of named uses across 49,10,000 shares points to an issue somewhere between roughly ₹112 and ₹165. Today's quotes sit above that whole range. None of that makes the price wrong, and the company may well revise the issue after two years. It does mean the price carries assumptions that two years of silence have not tested.

The opportunity in Indian dredging looks real, and a company with 28 owned vessels and work from L&T is a credible way to own some of it. What an investor is being asked to assume is that one quarter in 2024 was the signal and everything since has been noise. That assumption is cheap to test. Nobody has published the test, and the documents that would settle it are the ones the company has not released.

Frequently asked questions

Is Amrut Dredging and Shipping listed? No. It filed a draft red herring prospectus on 21 November 2024 proposing a listing on the BSE SME platform, with Mark Corporate Advisors and Catalyst Capital Partners as lead managers and KFin Technologies as registrar. As of 12 November 2026 no price band, issue dates or final prospectus had been announced.

What is the Amrut Dredging unlisted share price today? Dealer quotes in the second week of November 2026 ranged from ₹199.40 to ₹232 per share, implying a market capitalisation of ₹285 crore to ₹331 crore on 1,42,74,725 shares. These are indicative quotes that differ between desks, not traded prices on any exchange.

What were Amrut Dredging's latest reported financials? For FY2024, revenue from operations of ₹38.77 crore and profit after tax of ₹5.00 crore, with operating cash flow of ₹5.67 lakh and trade receivables of ₹29.52 crore. No audited accounts for FY2025 or FY2026 have been published.

Why do some sites show FY2025 revenue of ₹72 crore and EPS of ₹8.39? Both come from a single quarter. The ₹72.36 crore figure is the June 2024 quarter's ₹18.09 crore multiplied by four. The ₹8.39 earnings per share is that same quarter, carried in the DRHP's peer table under a heading that says year ended 31 March 2024. The actual FY2024 figures are ₹38.77 crore of revenue and ₹3.99 of earnings per share.

What does the FY2025 income tax return show? Book profit under the Minimum Alternate Tax regime of ₹2,26,76,682 for the year ended 31 March 2025, with ₹37,85,191 of tax payable. The DRHP reports ₹12.87 crore of profit before tax for the first quarter of that same year, and the gap between the two has not been explained publicly.

Can I sell Amrut shares straight after it lists? Not immediately. Pre-issue shares held by non-promoters are locked in after an SME listing, and the SME period has been one year from allotment rather than the six months mainboard issues get. A SEBI consultation paper from October 2026 proposes reducing it to six months, but that was not yet in force at the time of writing. Confirm the current rule before assuming a timeline.

Sources: Revenue, profit, cash flow, receivables, balance sheet, net worth, securities premium, retained earnings, share capital history, share counts, allotment prices, customer concentration, charter-hire share, order book, employee numbers, contingent liabilities, corporate history, the peer comparison table and its notes, and the objects of the issue are all from the Draft Red Herring Prospectus of Amrut Dredging and Shipping Limited dated 21 November 2024, including the restated financial information audited by Bilimoria Mehta & Co (FRN 101490W). The FY2025 figures are from the company's Income Tax Return acknowledgement for assessment year 2025-26 (acknowledgement number 804082241091225, filed 9 December 2025), published by the company on its own investor page. Both documents are on amrutdredging.in. Cargo-handling and Sagarmala figures are from Government of India material. Knowledge Marine figures are from exchange data and reported FY2026 results. Capital gains and lock-in positions are stated as at the time of writing and should be confirmed with a tax adviser and against the current SEBI ICDR text. The ₹199.40 to ₹232 prices are indicative dealing levels quoted on unlisted-share platforms on 11 and 12 November 2026 and are not exchange prices; unlisted shares trade by negotiation, spreads are wide, quotes vary between dealers, and the price you transact at may differ materially. No audited accounts for FY2025 or FY2026 had been published at the time of writing, and the company's investor page carries no commentary beyond the documents cited. The Finance Network publishes research and does not facilitate transactions in unlisted shares. We will update this piece if the company addresses the questions it raises.

This is not investment advice. Consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making any investment decision.

Related reading on The Finance Network: how unlisted-share platforms get share counts wrong. Track the price on the Amrut Dredging company page, browse every company we price on the pre-IPO companies page, or see where our prices come from.